How Do You Find the Size of an RPM Package before You Install It?

Problem scenario
You want to find out how much disk space you will consume before you install a given yum or RPM package.  You want to list available packages and their size based on a near match of a name.  What is the Linux (e.g., yum) command to find size of the package before you actually install it?

Solution

Prerequisites
This assumes that you have installed yum-utils.  If you need to install yum-utils, use this command: sudo yum -y install yum-utils

Procedures
Use this command but replace "openssl" with the name of the package you want to learn the more about):

sudo repoquery *openssl* --qf "%{name}:\n%{size:h}"

# We do not recommend changing the "h" to a "k" or "m" as the man page may suggest.

You may want to try this command too (but replace "openssl" with the name of the package you want):

yum info openssl

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